


The Zoologist's Husband

by AuthorLoremIpsum



Series: Lodger Stories [2]
Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: Beheading, F/M, Gen, Violent Death, i stole the monsters from the Monstrumologist basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 14:44:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12278673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorLoremIpsum/pseuds/AuthorLoremIpsum
Summary: Mrs. Cantilupe is married, that much we know, but who is (or was) her husband? Where did he go? Was he a Rogue Scientist too? Helsby goes looking for answers.





	The Zoologist's Husband

    Griffin’s cat was playing a dangerous game, and Lavender was tired of saving the white furball from imminent demise every time Snowball decided with would be fun to visit the eldritch horror in the cage. The cat had figured out where to sit so it was just out of reach of the black thing in the cage, but it was still uncomfortably close to death.

    Close enough that Lavender felt justified picking it up by the scruff of its neck and carrying them outside the lab. She nudged the cat with her boot, “Go on now, shoo! Can’t have you running around in there, you’ll get hurt!”

    The white cat sat and looked up at her, head tilted slightly. Lavender pouted, “Don’t give me that, shoo. Griffin will throw a fit if you get hurt down here and _frankly_ I don’t have time to be dealing with that. What, you want a treat?”

    The cat only stared, tail flicking back and forth a few times before standing and walking off silently. Lavender sighed in relief and turned, walking back into the lab, the vague sounds of animals all around her. Growls, bird calls, things meant to mimic human voices, and something baying in a high pitched and squeaky voice. And over it, Cantilupe’s chortling laughter could be heard, followed shortly by a nasty sounding crash.

    Lavender hurried along, rounding a corner made of crates and small, empty cages to find her senior flat on her behind, laughing wildly at a beast flailing in the cave before her.

    “Mrs. C!”

    The older woman sat up and clapped, “My goodness darling! Look how much she’s grown since we brought her in! I barely opened the cage and she managed to throw me back!”

    Lavender grinned a little, “You’re okay then?”

    “I’m the happiest I’ve been all day!” Cantilupe pushed her dark goggles down and placed a pair of fine spectacles on her nose as she stood, dusting her dress off. For barely a moment, her feet were visible, and one could see heavy boots beneath the regal skirt she wore.

The creature in the cage, a large red worm with a face like a hole of teeth about as round as a soup pot and as long as Cantilupe was tall, hissed and growled at her, slamming its head into the door in a vain attempt to escape again. Its tail lashed out of an opening in the bars on top of the cage, revealing how it’d slammed Cantilupe and sent her falling. The zoologist knelt in front of the cage with a grin, “Now now dear, you keep behaving like that, you’ll be sent to bed without dinner. Please, behave yourself?”

The worm hissed dangerously, but pulled its tail back into the cage, curling into a protective ball. Cantilupe smiled, “There you go, now I’ll see if Griffin’s caught anymore of those invisible mice, heaven knows we don’t need them running around.”

“You gave him our extra traps right?” Lavender asked, stepping closer to the cage and examining it for breaks or dents beyond the usual. Cantilupe nodded as she stood, stretching a bit, “Indeed I did, I do hope he’s had more luck with catching them.”

“Should’ve gave them collars before making them disappear,” Lavender chuckled, walking past the cage to pick up a bucket of small meat scraps. She glanced over her shoulder as Cantilupe began to leave, just in time to hear an order: “Make sure the Nautili aren’t fighting again! We can’t lose anymore of those.”

“Yes ma’am!” she answered, carrying the bucket off among the cages. Every so often, she dropped a piece of meat into a slot on the boxes or cages, listening until there was the sound of eating before moving on. Some of them, when she opened the slots, would reach for her and cry out, trying their damndest to get revenge for being incarcerated, barely satisfied with the pieces of meat she gave them. When the bucket was emptied, and the lab quieted now that its occupants were sated, Lavender let out a sigh of relief and hurried to the tank with the Nautili.

Nautilus, as one might know, are aquatic cephalopods similar to cuttlefish but bearing a large, spiral shell that protects its squishy body. The Nautili in Cantilupe and Lavender’s lab were very much like their ordinary cousins, if they weren’t for the strange barbs on the tentacles that stuck out of the shell of the nautilus, glowing softly, all of them containing a very strong poison. There were all but four of these in the tank, the only four that the two zoologists had managed to save from their cave beneath an active volcano before the pool itself burst like a geyser.

They’d found the poison to be very potent but, when diluted, it could be used as a way to make things glow, similar to paint. The only problem was, in an attempt to encourage breeding of this tiny and dying species, they’d taken two males and two females. When put together, in any combination, for any reason besides mating, they fought.

So they’d tried putting a relaxing chemical into their food in an attempt to placate the nautili, so they could be in the same tank together and so far it was working! Lavender grinned and made a note on a small paper sitting on the table with the tanks.

“Oh Lavender!” called a voice.

“Over here!” she answered, making more notes as she observed the nautili. At the sound of footsteps and the briefest whiffs of seasalt, she looked up and smirked. “Helsby! And what brings you to our corner of the Society? Is the repair kraken doing alright?”

“Oh she’s quite fine!” he said with a smile, looking around at the many cages with curiosity. He looked at her, head tilted to the side in curiosity, “I actually have a few curious questions to ask you concerning your teacher.”

Lavender frowned and set down her pen and paper, “Please tell me there’s not another betting pool about her husband.”

“Oh no nothing like that!” Helsby said with a smile. “I merely wanted to ask if you knew how she came to be an, extremofaunic zoologist. And, to an extent, was _Mister_ Cantilupe a Rogue Scientist like us?”

To his surprise, Lavender’s expression became dark. “I thought it was obvious enough when the Missus kept denying to talk about it over dinner that this wasn’t something for conversation. She doesn’t like talking about it and I won’t either.”

“So you _do_ know then,” he asked, putting a hand on his chin, a curious frown on his face. Lavender’s anger became an outright scowl, the kind of expression that makes one step back in fear. “Helsby, stop, this isn’t about gossip, this isn’t about what I know, this is about the fact that Mrs. C has made it _abundantly clear_ that her past is not up for conversation. I don’t appreciate being seen as a loophole to get to the truth.”

The bathynaut raised his hands in defense, looking mildly alarmed. “Lavender I meant no harm, honest! We’re all endlessly curious about the missing Mister, that is all. If you really insist that no one should know I will stop pressing.”

Lavender relaxed a bit, still keeping a stern gaze on him. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use me to get to Cantilupe, that’s rather offensive if you ask me.” She turned sharply, picking up a brush from where it was set on some vague surface, and set off towards a large cage sitting beneath a window, covered with a tarp.

Helsby wandered after, lingering like a bad taste in the mouth, and Lavender grabbed the tarp, whisking it off of the cage. The creatures inside, barely larger than a fist, fuzzy and full of energy, rose to an active frenzy as they were exposed to sunlight. The bathynaut took a step back in surprise and Lavender knelt, reaching through the bars and hatching of the cage to pet these fuzzballs who began to look less like frenzied fluffs, and more like lemurs.

Lemurs with blue stripes and chitters that almost sounded like language. Lavender opened a small door on the cage and only one scampered out, up her arm and sat on her shoulder. The others calmed and waited behind the open door, watching as the zoologist began to brush the lemur that had scampered out.

After a few silent moments she said: “Helsby, you’d better go, they’re incredibly intelligent and known to pull the hair of strangers. And bite off fingers.” Helsby became visibly pale and backed up, the lemurs chittered in a manner like laughter and Lavender traded the one on her shoulder for another, who she began to brush as well.

Another moment.

“You really want to know, don’t you?”

“I do,” he admitted, watching the lemurs carefully. Lavender gave him a sideways glance, then pointed to a shelf. “Grab a brush, sit, I’ll tell you. But you’ll have to ask Mrs. C for details.”

~

    They were travelling in northern Africa, Mister and Missus Cantilupe, younger then, with only streaks of grey in her brown hair and a rounder face. Her smile was not nearly so jovial then, but a smirk that came only when the thrill of the hunt had gripped the party in its deadly talons. Her husband, a strong man with a smile that shone from his dark face like the sun, was her partner in crime and science.

    She the rogue, he the diplomat, they’d met on the animal trails of Africa and never parted.

    Monsters had always drawn the interest of the duo, and so they travelled north, far into the Savannas and among the nomadic tribes therein. They searched, following legends of cannibals inhuman and monstrous, referred to by Shakespeare and other ancient literatures. But never, never had someone seen these beasts and lived.

    That the common populace knew anyway.

    Mr. C had read many a book, and didn’t fear these creatures, for he knew how to kill them and was in love with the sharpest shooter in Africa. Piping the ace and nine-hundred yards was nothing for her. The two believed they could track down these beasts, kill one, and return with its corpse as testament to their study.

    But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

    They were camping on the outskirts of a jungle with a party of twenty men and five women, all taught how to use firearms, all unafraid with the prospect of facing monsters said to devour anyone they meet.The fires were lit, drinks were shared and stories laughed over.

    Then the sound began to come from the jungle, a hiss like snakes, but more guttural and throaty. The hunters, all of them, rose to their feet, watching in fear as shadows moved among the trees, white bodies shining in the moonlight.

    A young man was sleeping against a tree at the edge of camp, and he was the first to die.

    A powerful pale hand, large enough to make an adult male’s look like a child’s, grabbed the poor sod, inch long claws digging into his face and throat before he could scream. He was yanked into the shadows and they all heard him screaming as the sounds of snapping bone and tearing flesh came from beyond the plants and shadows. Pale bodies leaped towards the sound, joining the carnage before-

    Silence.

    Thundering, heart racing silence.

    “We found them,” Mr. C said in awe and horror, hand going to a pistol on his belt.

    “No,” his wife said with a scowl, raising her rifle slowly, “They found us.”

    And the gates of Hell opened beyond the tree line.

With a screech like a banshee, these monsters tore forth from the jungle, humanoid without heads, mouths like sharks and harpoons for claws, leaping impossible distances into the camp as gunfire erupted. One, two, three shots into one before it slammed into the man who’d been firing at it, grabbing his head wholly in that sharklike mouth of teeth and ripping it clean away with impossible strength.

    There were maybe only thirty of these horrifying creatures, but that was more than enough, it was clear the humans did not have the upper hand. Mrs. Cantilupe managed to fell three of them, precise shots to their groin region causing them to collapse and lie still, and enrage the other beasts who saw. Mr. C fired two shots before grabbing the arm of his wife and pulling her towards the horses, spurred on by the pure horror that was taking place behind them. He cried for retreat, praying that some of the others would escape too, but most of the horses had already fled.

    More and more of their party began to die, tackled, snared by those horrifying barbed claws, bitten and ripped to shreds, dying in agony unless another could spare them the mercy of a bullet.

    The Cantilupes mounted their fastest horse, a poor stallion who’d been straining against his ropes for hours and needed no prompting to take off into the desert. The Missus rode backwards, firing at the horrifying beasts that dared to follow them, felling another three.

    And it appeared that they’d made it.

    By morning, the poor horse was exhausted, as were its riders, yet they returned to the encampment.

    There were no survivors, bloodied and decapitated bodies of friends and travelling companions laid amongst the few beasts that had died in the scuffle. Mr. Cantilupe, ever the more sensitive of the two, fell to his knees and sobbed for the loss of his friends, new and old, people he trusted his life with. Mrs. C set to work, gathering the remains in what would be a truly noble funeral pyre.

    All of the corpses, human and monstrous, joined the pile, all but one.

    One that she’d fired down, what they’d come for, a body to study. Cantilupe and her husband dragged it away from the fire, trussing it up at the legs and wrists that it would be easier to transport before going to the bonfire and lighting it.

    With the clothes and luggage of the dead, it lit quickly and would burn long into the night. Mr. Cantilupe bowed his head respectfully, speaking a soft prayer that their souls would be safe in the beyond, but his wife simply watched the blaze.

    Which is why she was able to dodge when the slightest hint of movement behind her made her hair move.

    She leaped to the side, shoving her husband desperately as a massive hand streaked in blood swiped the space where the two had stood. The creature they’d tied, it was on its feet, hands bound, wound in its abdomen still bleeding, the ropes at its feet snapped easily, somehow still alive. Cantilupe’s balance failed her and she fell onto her back, scrambling into a sitting position just in time to see the injured monster tackle her husband, who screamed in fear.

    The sound of bones and flesh crunching, and silence.

    The beast turned, blood dripping from its maw, black eyes locked on the hunter. Cantilupe blinked, and something in her mind snapped.

    She drew her rifle and screamed, tears beginning to leak down her cheeks as she aimed the gun. It screeched in return, dropping on all fours and leaping for her, exposing the underbelly she’d missed once before.

    That time, she didn’t miss.

~

    Helsby, and the three lemurs sitting on his shoulders, all looked stunned. Lavender went silent, brushing the fur of the smallest and fluffiest lemur, watching as it curled around her hand, looking up at her sympathetically. She gave it a scratch behind the ears and lifted it back to the cage, where it scampered in after its brothers and sisters. The lemurs on Helsby’s shoulders followed suit, leaving the bathynaut alone and stunned.

    Lavender shut the cage with a click and lifted the tarp, “You behave yourselves now.” The small animals chittered in response as she hid their cage again and stood.

    “Well, you know now,” she said, looking to Helsby. “Happy?”

    “Far from it,” he answered morosely, standing. “I had no idea-”

    “Not everyone’s greatest threat is drowning or setting themself on fire,” Lavender interrupted sharply, walking past him. “Some of us have to travel, far, and wide, we’ve been chased by enemies, human and animal, and it leaves a mark.”

    “Have you-” she shot him a glare sharp enough to cut glass and he held up his hands in defense, looking startled.

    A beat passed and the junior zoologist sighed, “If, if you wouldn’t mind, I have work to do.”

    “I, I understand. Sorry for, well, everything just now.” He walked past her and said: “I’ll, I’ll just ask Mrs. C herself next time.” Lavender didn’t answer.

    As he was leaving the crowded, noisy lab, Helsby found himself face to face with Mrs. Cantilupe, who put on a warm smile when she saw him. “Why Ranjit! Good to see you, how’s Charybdis doing? Is the new diet suiting her?”

    He blinked and nodded, “Yes she’s doing quite well. I, just came to ask you a question actually.”

    “Well, ask away,” she said with a smile.

    Helsby hesitated, remembering the story Lavender told him. “I heard you could shoot, very well, that true?”

Cantilupe blinked and laughed, waving a hand dismissively, “Why, I haven’t fired a gun in years lad! Not since my shooting arm got broken, never been the same since! If you want someone to teach you how to shoot, you ought to talk to Doddle, his aim is incredible for a man who works with sweets!” She chuckled again and passed him, patting his shoulder in a light hearted and friendly manner in passing. “Perhaps I’ll see you tonight for tea?”

Her smile was flawless and bore no weight, her words were happy and honest.

All as if she didn’t carry the weight of all those deaths on her shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> I was rereading the Monstrumologist and I kept imagining Cantilupe on her backside, mad as hell, firing what looked like a rifle while dressed in adventuring gear. Originally I had the Society get infested with monsters but then I went for something more, heart-wrenching.


End file.
